On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla

[David Vaughan]

On 25/02/2006, Garrett Hylltun <garrett at paraboliclogic.com> and  
Gregory Lypny <gregory.lypny at videotron.ca> wrote stuff.

Sorry to others for some repetitious elements in here but I see a  
couple of basic themes in the offerings from Garrett and Gregory  
(principally the former) which I wish to answer.

My credentials for so doing include not only the usual geological  
ages in and around software but particularly more than ten years  
spent observing or intervening in large scale projects which were off  
the rails and subject to commercial dispute, always involving  
millions to tens of millions of dollars. Problem management is, more  
or less, how I make my living. I also designed quality assurance  
facilities for a couple of government departments, one carrying a  
2000-strong IT workforce and another doing highly critical defence  
work. The relevance of that is a high level of familiarity with what  
constitutes a faulty product to different people and how users'  
requirements are obtained, interpreted and implemented.

I understand Garrett to be saying that all bugs should be fixed and  
that the order of their repair is immaterial given the first  
assumption. His dissatisfaction with the failure of this desirable  
outcome is exacerbated by the perceived high price of the product.

However, Garrett fails to define a bug and there immediately is a  
massive problem. One person's bug is another person's feature  
request, a third person's "could not care less" and as often than not  
is unrelated to the software in question anyway (false report). This  
is unavoidable and and automatically renders any "fix all bugs"  
request as, well, just plain silly. I apologise for any personal  
offence anyone might take from that because I mean none, but there is  
really no other description for it. There will always be a range of  
items where their bug status is legitimately moot, so where do you  
"draw the line"? That is a matter of commercial dispute, of priority  
against demand and resources, of adequate bug definition and  
ultimately of agreement about where effort is most productively  
invested so that *both* parties are commercially successful.

The inexhaustible and infallible Alpha and Beta testing teams you  
seek do not exist outside the halls of Valhalla [or insert preferred  
paradise] and even there they are driven to drinking and argument.  
Incidentally, Gregory, "the same bug" will not, alas, appear in  
headers without human intervention and interpretation of the myriad  
descriptions, many of them fairly incompetent, of the potential bug.

For decades we have been grabbing developers and banging their heads  
against brick walls and steel pillars screaming "What about the  
customer's business needs!" So, how is it that RR will make all  
decisions on criticality of those bugs of which they are aware and  
which they choose to define as bugs? Their problem is not that they  
are too customer-driven with BZ, it is contrarily that it is damned  
hard to get some decent customer input. Even Dan, who is as  
experienced as anyone, confesses that he does not get motivated to  
use Bugzilla. Criticality, or priority, does matter. In a bank, if  
there were a bug which even in rare circumstances created an  
incorrect transaction then there would be a fix and release before  
virtually any other bug were managed in that software. Far from  
denigrating RR for exposing their bug data to entry and voting, we  
should be applauding their sound system and devising ways of making  
it more acceptable to users (as attempted by RZ).

One of the most reliable pieces of large scale software I know is OS/ 
390 or z/OS in its current incarnation. It hosts a myriad of the most  
critical commercial and defence systems around the world. How much  
money would you like to lay down, Garrett, that its bug list has zero  
length? Or that every one on the list is always fixed by the next  
release, or that customers pay no licence fee to obtain fixes? It is  
a waste of time even to imagine it, or to borrow words from your own  
blog, it "is not science, it is nothing but pure religion."

Finally, the cost issue is not worth debating too much except for a  
couple of observations. My daughter is currently in Edinburgh and  
reports no stream of Ferrari Enzos racing about the Scottish hills  
while the RR office lies silent but for the flickering stream of bug  
reports. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, however, have no problem  
affording such fripperies should they wish it, for they charge  
hundreds of dollars for software sold to millions or tens of  
millions, not to thousands.

Yet, every now and then, I see a window appear on my machine. It  
says: "Would you like to report this problem to Apple?"

regards
David
Director
DVK Consult Pty Ltd